This invention relates generally to image detection, and more particularly, to methods and systems for detecting biometric characteristics in an image.
Users conduct transactions with many different entities in person and remotely over the Internet. Transactions may be network-based transactions for purchasing items from a merchant website or may involve accessing confidential information from a website remotely over the Internet. Entities that own such websites typically require successfully identifying users as the result of an authentication transaction before permitting users to conduct the transactions.
During remotely conducted network-based authentication transactions, users typically interact with an authentication system to prove their claim of identity. Such interactions generally provide a claim of identity and biometric data captured from the user to the authentication system. However, imposters have been known to impersonate users during authentication transactions by providing a false claim of identity supported by fraudulent biometric data in an effort to deceive an authenticating entity into concluding that the imposter is the person they claim to be. Such impersonations are known as spoofing.
Impostors currently use many methods to obtain or create fraudulent biometric data that can be submitted during authentication transactions. For facial biometric data imposters have been known to obtain two-dimensional pictures of others, from social networking sites, and present the obtained pictures to a camera during authentication to support a false claim of identity. Such fraudulent biometric data are known to be difficult to detect using known liveness detection methods because it is difficult to detect characteristics in the biometric data.
Methods are known that arrange a window about an image of captured facial biometric data. Although all facial characteristics may appear within the window, the location of facial characteristics such as eyes, nose, and mouth within the image cannot be accurately determined. It is known to be difficult, time consuming, and expensive to accurately detect and locate facial features from such images that may be used to determine liveness of users and to authenticate the identity of users.